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This is the fourth post in a series. Today's focus: horse-slaughter lobbyists, sympathetic Congressmen and media coverage. (Photo: former U.S. Senator, Larry Craig)

Only three. This is the number it took to remove language from an agriculture appropriations spending bill on November 18, reversing a five-year ban on horsemeat inspections. The culprits? Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA). Their strategy? The old closed-door-session-on-Capitol-Hill trick.

This was of course executed at the last moment, allowing Kohl, Blunt and Kingston to hold up the appropriations bill until a government shutdown loomed. The tactic worked as planned, forcing President Obama to sign, despite a 2008 campaign promise to ban horse slaughter and the export of horses for slaughter. And the best part: hardly a word of media coverage was leaked for a good ten days.

Consider the more than 70% of Americans opposed to horse slaughter who awoke on November 29, 2011, to learn that they were now on the hook for funding USDA inspections of horsemeat from the nation’s Quarter Horses (70% of those slaughtered in 2010), Thoroughbreds (16%—many, right off the track) and other hard-working, revenue-producing and well-loved breeds.

Let’s also not forget the more than 5,000 Americans who recently signed a “We The People” petition calling on the President to sign the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act of 2011. Also worthy of sympathy are the four sponsors and 175 co-sponsors of this bipartisan legislation.

Media Promotes Horse Slaughter

The short burst of media attention that finally exploded on Nov. 28th and 29th was notable for what it did and didn’t say. No mention of the President getting screwed, the 70% of Americans and taxpayers getting screwed, the other members of Congress getting screwed, the “We the People” getting screwed.

The article went on to explain how the 2007 closure of slaughterhouses had led to an “unwanted horse problem,” and quoted Jack Kingston expressing humanitarian concern over the U.S.’ inability to “monitor horse slaughter in a plant in Mexico or Canada … so we don't know if it's being done humanely or not because the USDA obviously doesn't have any jurisdiction there.”

It all made Kohl, Blunt and Kingston’s closed-door horse-meat-inspection caper seem unexpectedly well-intentioned. This was even more true when Patrik Jonsson’s second article appeared the next morning, dumbfounding everyone with the announcement that PETA had endorsed the move. “It's quite an unpopular position we've taken,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said understatedly.

All this was cleverly synched up with a PETA event planned later that evening at New York City’s 92nd Street Y. Calling it an “Exciting Celebrity Panel in NYC!”, PETA Senior Vice President Dan Matthews described how it would put him “in the hot seat at a public debate about PETA's tactics.”

Matthews went on to explain how “the panel discussion, called ‘Extreme Marketing for a Cause,’ will feature New York Times ad critic Stuart Elliott and Newsweek celebrity columnist Lloyd Grove. I will answer questions from the panel and the audience about how far PETA is willing to go to keep animal rights issues in the public eye.”